| Research Question. To what extent does teaching the reading strategy of identifying cause and effect by using a graphic organizer impact my students' comprehension of their history text?Research Activities. This research was conducted in an 11th grade college prep, U.S. History classroom in a large suburban California high school where I am the teacher of record. There are 33 students in the classroom. Four of the students in the class have been re-designated as English Language Proficient. There are also 3 English Language Learners in the class. I chose 4 focus students to look at for the intervention. Each of them has Spanish as a home language. One is English Language Proficient, one was recently re-designated English Language Proficient, and two are still classified as English Language Learners. The intervention took place over a week and a half, from January 20th, 2009 to February 4, 2009. The intervention involved direct instruction, teacher-led whole class work and modeling, paired in-class work, and independent work. The class also did whole-class guided work correction and analysis. I collected several forms of data throughout the intervention. I began the intervention with an attitudinal survey. I also administered a baseline assessment, a mid-intervention quiz, two sets of paired/independent graphic organizers, a final assessment and a final survey. The purpose of this intervention was to determine the effect on students' comprehension of their history text of teaching cause and effect text structure and of utilizing a graphic organizer. Before the intervention, over one-half of my students lacked an awareness or a knowledge of problems they encountered while they read, and over one-half the students couldn't point to any specific strategies they used while reading. After the intervention, based on the analysis of their surveys and an interview with the focus students, nearly the whole class saw value in and an appreciation of how understanding text structure can lead to better reading comprehension. The class average increased from a 76% on the baseline assessment to an 80% on the final assessment. On the final assessment, the students made fewer comprehension-related errors. This indicated that they were using a learned strategy to assist in reading comprehension and that the strategy indeed helped with reading comprehension.Instructional Approaches. Assessment/Evaluation, Class discussion, Cooperative learning, Direct Instruction, Homework, Graphic Organizers/Concept Maps, Reading-Comprehension, Reading-Strategies, Think-alouds. |
